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Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 2490

May 16, 2016

Should we synthesise a human genome?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, ethics, genetics, law

As specialists gather in private to discuss a grand plan for constructing a human genome, Drew Endy and Laurie Zoloth argue that such an enormous moral gesture should not be discussed behind closed doors.

Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images.

At Harvard today, an invitation-only group of about 150 scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs, met to discuss if and how to construct from scratch an entire human genome – the heritable genetic material that in nature is transferred from parents to children.

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May 16, 2016

MMTP AMA Senolytics: Seek and Destroy! • /r/Futurology

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, life extension

On Reddit Futurology today!


The Major Mouse Testing Program is an ambitious project of the International Longevity Alliance, featuring an international team of scientists and advocates testing therapies against aging decline. This experiment is is lead by world class stem cell researcher Dr Alexandra Stolzing and was inspired by our scientific advisor and colleague Dr Aubrey De Grey.

The Major Mouse Testing Program is seeking to speed up scientific progress in the field of regenerative medicine and bio-gerontology. After ILA experts conducted an analysis of delays preventing the development of life extension technologies, it was shown that a serious problem was the lack of robust animal data for the potential of different compounds to promote health and extend maximum lifespan. Without this data promising interventions cannot enter clinical trials and become available to the general public.

Continue reading “MMTP AMA Senolytics: Seek and Destroy! • /r/Futurology” »

May 15, 2016

Scientists Hold Secret Meeting to Consider Creating a Synthetic Human Genome

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and an organizer of the proposed project, said there had been a misunderstanding. The project was not aimed at creating people, just cells, and would not be restricted to human genomes, he said. Rather it would aim to improve the ability to synthesize DNA in general, which could be applied to various animals, plants and microbes.


The project poses ethical issues about whether humans could be created without parents.

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May 14, 2016

New Technique Enhances Nanomedicine

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, materials

One of the hurdles of realizing the promise of nanoparticles is that scientists can’t view where they go or how the nanoparticles interact with structures once they are inside of the body. A new technique that involves injecting an acrylamide hydrogel into organs and tissues removed from mice allows researchers to image nanoparticles more than 25 times deeper than is possible with current methods, to a depth of more than 1 millimeter. Lipids are what cause tissues to look opaque. By using the hydrogel to bind all of the molecules together except for lipids, which washed away easily, the team, led by Warren C. W. Chan, were able to make the tissues look transparent but remain intact. The work, published in ACS Nano, may help researchers be able to tell if therapy-loaded nanoparticles are delivering the cargo to the desired destination. Check out the video below.

ExclusiveTechnologies.

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May 14, 2016

Scientists from IISc are close to curing cancers

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, transportation

Nice!!!!


Develop microscopic vehicles that can carry anti-cancer drug molecules to affected cells

Indian scientists are closing in on a breakthrough in cancer treatment that will see a variety of cancers being cured using just a series of injections without side-effects on the body, that is characteristic of chemotherapy. The new technology has the potential to completely bypass chemotherapy.

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May 14, 2016

Nanotechnology To Make Holographic Applications More Secure And Efficient

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, encryption, nanotechnology, security

Making Holographic Apps more secured and efficient.


Since its birth, holograms have been extensively used to serve security systems and related purposes. The making of a hologram, dissecting it to pieces and again rejoining the blocks involves a steady orientation of lenses which encodes the information with depth perception that could be deciphered later according to requirement.

It’s hard to imagine a 21st century city running smooth without an immense use of holograms, small or big sized 2D cards with 3D engraved pictures that are present in credit cards, grocery objects, books, biomedical devices and in other objects requiring retrievable information to be stored.

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May 14, 2016

Team discovers new HIV vaccine target

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

A team led by scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has reported a research trifecta. They discovered a new vulnerable site on HIV for a vaccine to target, a broadly neutralizing antibody that binds to that target site, and how the antibody stops the virus from infecting a cell. The study was led by scientists at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of NIH.

The new target is a part of HIV called the fusion peptide, a string of eight amino acids that helps the virus fuse with a cell to infect it. The fusion peptide has a much simpler structure than other sites on the virus that HIV vaccine scientists have studied.

The scientists first examined the blood of an HIV-infected person to explore its ability to stop the virus from infecting cells. The blood was good at neutralizing HIV but did not target any of the vulnerable spots on the virus where broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies (bnAbs) were known to bind.

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May 14, 2016

Scientists have discovered a cell that does something they thought was impossible

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Interesting…

Odd, but definitely interesting.


For a long time it has been thought that all eukaryotes — organisms in which the DNA is enclosed in a membrane including almost all life we can see — had to contain mitochondria.

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May 14, 2016

Head transplant ops ‘will work’, say experts… but the side effects could be the worst form of insanity ever experienced by a human

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A RUSSIAN man who has a debilitating illness has volunteered to become the first person to undergo a head transplant – but experts say the side effects of the procedure could be worse than death.

Valery Spiridonov, 30, suffers from Werdnig-Hoffmann disease, a rare form of spinal muscular atrophy.

The controversial operation will involve cooling his head to around 12 degrees Celsius, cutting it from his body and connecting it to the donated body of a brain-dead person.

Continue reading “Head transplant ops ‘will work’, say experts… but the side effects could be the worst form of insanity ever experienced by a human” »

May 13, 2016

Scientific Research Needs a Trustless Blockchain Architecture to Be Trusted

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, bitcoin

Dr. Greg Irving, a Clinical Lecturer from the University of Cambridge, recently authored a research project on the potential impact of blockchain technology on scientific research. While the use is not novel in principle, it underscores the very reason blockchain was created.

Why Scientific Research?

Irving, and rightfully so, says that in order to truly trust scientific research the reader’s must know that the content and subsequent conclusions of the research has maintained its integrity throughout editing and publishing. The author references “outcome switching, data dredging, and selective publication” as just a some of the potential pitfalls that can result in bastardized research. How then can researchers increase the trust that their research is has not been tampered with? In response Irving writes.

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